August 15, 20131 Comment on State park ranger asks mountain bikers help to catch arsonist
Firefighters in Santa Cruz County have fought over a dozen human-caused fires along the Highway 9 corridor over the past month, and officials are asking the local mountain bike community to be especially vigilant for suspicious characters who may be intentionally setting these fires.
August 15, 20133 Comments on California bicycle legislation update 2013
$44.5M for Safe Routes (kinda sorta); larger bike racks for Sacramento buses approved. Environmental review exemption for bike plans and three feet passing on today’s Senate agenda.
The California Senate returned from their summer recess this week and they’re busy plowing through the hundreds of bills on their agenda. Among them are a number of bills that can have a direct impact on California cyclists. I’ve also thrown a couple of transit-related bills in this update.
August 1, 201331 Comments on Office building installs bike racks, tickets cyclists who use them
The Vancouver Sun & Province Building aka Granville Square in Vancouver, BC, installed bike racks outside of their building. You’d think the bike racks are for parking bikes, right?
Molly Millar, the fashion editor for Momentum Magazine, rode her bike to her day job as a researcher at this Class A office building. At the end of the day, she was surprised to see a parking ticket on her bike!
The nonplussed Millar wrote the building management company, Cadillac Fairview about the ticket. Their response:
Hi Molly, We do like to encourage cycling to work and our tenants to think about being ‘green’ … but we also need to maintain the professional image of the building. We don’t want to encourage all day parking of bikes throughout our plaza, which would deter from this [professional image].
It turns out the bike racks are for couriers only, with a 15 minute time limit for parking.
Cadillac Fairview highlights their green initiatives, including their “Green At Work” program for their Vancouver waterfront properties, on their website.
At Cadillac Fairview, we take pride in being industry leaders and adopting progressive environmental standards and practices that demonstrate our commitment to corporate social responsibility. The sucessful execution of company-wide green initiatives is being achieved through a detailed, measurable, and long-term program called GREEN AT WORK™. This program is national in scope; implemented at all properties, it has set operational benchmarks to reduce energy consumption and waste, improve environmental protection, and encourage sustainable procurement and ongoing communication with key stakeholders. GREEN AT WORK™ supports Cadillac Fairview’s ongoing commitment to corporate social responsibility with the belief that by working with our tenants, employees, suppliers, and customers we are “building sustainability together™”.
Update: After publication of this post, other people who work in that building pointed out to me that long term bike parking is available out of the way in the parking garage, with bike lockers for everyday bike commuters. The lockers are apparently assigned to individuals for a nominal annual fee. These outside racks frequently fill up, which makes it difficult for the couriers who depend on these racks for their jobs. It’s unclear to me what’s available on an ad hoc basis for occasional commuters and visitors who need to stay longer than 15 minutes.
Follow Molly Millar on Twitter. 
July 30, 20131 Comment on Sunnyvale to replace parking with bike lanes on El Camino Real
The Sunnyvale City Council approved a plan to remove street parking and replace that with bike lanes on El Camino Real (ECR) between Sunnyvale Avenue and Remington Drive during their meeting on July 23, 2013.
ECR is a six lane traffic sewer in this part of Sunnyvale. This half mile segment of bike lanes will be the very first bike lanes painted into this historic highway in Santa Clara County. Because this state highway is under Caltrans control, the city could only obtain permission to stripe ECR if they removed street parking. The below map shows existing bike lanes in blue and the new proposed lanes in green. Click through to Google Maps for the larger geographic context.
July 15, 20134 Comments on Bay Area Bike Share: Membership sales begin TODAY!
Bay Area Bike Share (“BABS”) membership sign up begins today.
You can bet your bottom bracket that I’m signed up for the $88 annual membership. 24 hour membership runs $9, while 3 day memberships go for $22. Unlimited use of the bikes in San Francisco, Redwood City, Palo Alto, Mountain View and San Jose is included in this membership as long as you return the bike to a kiosk within 30 minutes. Go beyond 30 minutes and it’s $4 for the first hour, then $7 for each additional 30 minutes beyond that.
The 30 minute time limit encourages high turnover so more people can use the bikes. Otherwise, you might just ride the bike to your office and keep it there all day before returning home for the evening.
How does bike share ensure bike availability at transit stations during the commute? Workers balance the fleet by loading piles of bikes up on their trucks up to return them to heavily used kiosks. The process is reversed in the evening.
Go to Bay Area Bike Share and sign up today!
July 9, 20138 Comments on Seth Vidal killed by hit & run driver
Seth Vidal, a well known open source software contributor, was cycling near his home in Durham, NC last night when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver. The 36 year old software developer was pronounced dead after he was taken to Duke hospital.
Witnesses describe a late 90s or early 2000s dark colored sedan that slowed then swerved before hitting Vidal on Hillendale Road near I-85. Police are asking the public for help in identifying the suspect.
Vidal was a emeritus board member of the Fedora Project and an employee at Red Hat, Inc. where he developed the Yellowdog Updater Modified (yum), a command-line tool to manage software packages for Linux distributions.
Although Vidal is known around the world for his contributions to open source software, local friends describe him as a valuable and giving member of the local cycling community who worked to improve cycling and walking conditions in his area.
Elsewhere:
Russ Roca and Laura Crawford met with Vidal when they traveled through Durham. Vidal describes the local cycling in this video.
Photo taken from Seth Vidal’s Twitter profile.